


Nine Questions

by BurnedStars777



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Childhood Memories, Confessions, F/M, First Kiss, Force Bond (Star Wars), Jakku, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Not Related, Questions, Rey (Star Wars) is a Mess, Rey Needs A Hug, Secrets, Virgin Rey (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 08:23:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20150590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurnedStars777/pseuds/BurnedStars777
Summary: In the midst of the war, during one of their Force Bonds, Rey and Kylo Ren agree to answer nine questions. Anything the other asks, they must answer. Truthfully.The agreement goes further than either anticipated.





	Nine Questions

**Author's Note:**

> To be honest, I’m going through a really tough time right now.  
I just broke up with my boyfriend of four years, and although it ended mutually and civilly, it was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do. People just grow apart sometimes.  
Star Wars was always a part of our relationship. We went to see The Force Awakens for our first date. We would make Kylo and Rey jokes. He would often come up behind me at random times and go “REY” in a choked voice to imitate the voice modulation with Kylo’s helmet lol; it would scare the shit out of me.   
I’m optimistic that we can still be friends one day, but right now, we both need space and it’s very difficult. This story just kind of fell out of me, so I hope you like the bittersweet nature of it, because it definitely helped me to write it.

It is not a surprise when the Force connects them again, six months after Crait. The only shocking part to Rey is that it took so long in the first place.

Granted, her control has been unwavering. Whenever she felt the brush of his mind against hers, she put up her walls, no easy fit for someone with minimal training.

But he catches her at a low point.

To say the Resistance has been struggling is an understatement. With their numbers reduced to dozens, most of Rey’s time is taken up by contacting old allies. Chewie takes her and Finn to multiple planets on the outer rim; on the off chance she can reconnect with folks who owe a favor to Leia. Most of the time they are either long dead, or unwilling to fight anymore.

And then, one day, she asks Chewie if they can go to Jakku.

She swore to herself she would never go back, but _his _voice keeps repeating over and over in her mind.

_They sold you for drinking money. They’re dead in a pauper’s grave on Jakku. _

She’s been content to ignore it; to convince herself it is all a lie, even though she knows he would not lie to her. Not about this.

So she gives in.

Chewie lands the ship onto the planet-it seems almost laughable to refer to it as her ‘home’ planet-and she departs the _Falcon _alone. It takes her two days to locate the graves, and when she does, she almost wishes she had not come at all.

They are not so much graves as they are pathetic holes. The bones are not even properly covered, despite the swirling sands of the planet. She knows it is them, for she recognizes the burgundy, cotton vest her father used to wear, the shabby teal necklace slung around her mother’s skeletal collar. Stars, she can’t remember their faces, even if there were a blaster pointed at her head, but she can remember those details.

When she leaves, she uses the Force to properly cover their remains in layers of sand.

She retires to one of the smaller chambers on the _Falcon. _Chewie, Maker bless him, volunteers to steer them back to base as she rests. She feels guilty, leaving all the flying to him, but right now she just needs to be alone.

So when she shuts the door and lies on her bunk, it makes sense for the buzzing in her brain to slip through her shields.

“I’m surprised,” he says, and she doesn’t even bother to open her eyes. “I would have thought your defenses would be stronger.”

“Don’t,” she bites out, pressing a hand to her forehead.

There is a beat of silence. “Something’s happened.”

She exhales loudly, sitting up so fast she becomes dizzy. She glares at him. “Leave. I don’t want to do this right now.”

He frowns. “You don’t have a choice.”

“Please. Just go away.” Her voice is a whisper. She is begging. But he still won’t listen.

“Rey.”

She shuts her eyes again. He’s already caused her so much pain. Why must he act sympathetic when she knows he won’t change? Why is she still listening when she knows her initial assessment of him was right?

“Do you honestly want me to leave?”

“Yes,” she snaps, her eyes hard. Has she not made that clear?

“There isn’t anything you’d like to know?”

Rey automatically opens her mouth to fire something back, but she hesitates. Just what does he mean about that?

“I won’t fall for your tricks,” she replies coldly.

“If I were trying to trick you, you would know,” he responds, still standing there, draped in black. She notices how there are purple bags under his eyes. Good. She hopes running an empire is tearing him to shreds.

“I don’t understand,” she answers cautiously, scanning his face.

He watches her, his red lips twitching thoughtfully. And then he gives her a proposal. It is far different than the one given to her in the throne room, and Rey isn’t sure which she should be more wary of. By the time he is finished explaining, she can hardly believe her ears.

A game. He is proposing they play a game.

“To learn,” he insists, “…about this Bond. About the other.”

“I know everything I need to know about you,” she hisses, but she knows this cannot be entirely true. She thought similarly on Ahch-To, and was proven wrong. But the thing is, she isn’t sure she can take learning anything more about him.

“If that’s what you think, then I’ll leave you to your sulking,” he says, and then turns to leave as if he is physically there and intends to exit.

“Wait,” Rey calls, almost at once, and she bites her tongue so hard she tastes blood. “This…game. I can ask anything?”

When he turns she expects to see a smug look on his face, but his features remain neutral.

“Anything,” he promises.

She knows, as she knew in the throne room, that he is not lying.

She agrees.

\--

They will take turns. Nine questions. No lying. Yes, the number is arbitrary. No, there aren’t any exceptions.

And he offers for her to go first.

She swallows, her spine straight against the wall of her bunk. He remains standing, watching her from six feet away. She vaguely wonders if he is in his own room, on the _Finalizer. _She decides to test the limitations of this game.

“Where are you?”

She scrutinizes him, her arms folded. Surely he won’t-

“The inner rim, near Coruscant,” he replies, and her eyes widen. He, on the other hand, remains impassive. “We’re moving,” he adds, and Rey thinks he does so in case she thinks to tell this information to her friends.

For some insane reason, she thinks she wouldn’t anyway.

She stiffens as she braces for his first question. She knows they agreed they wouldn’t lie to each other, but if he something that will put her friends in danger…

“What was the last meal you ate?” he inquires, with the seriousness of a true Supreme Leader.

She is baffled for the second time in under a minute, and when she recovers, she becomes angry. What is he playing at?

“I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish _Ren, _but-”

“Just answer the question,” he interrupts.

Rey is silent, surveying him with distrust, trying to find his true intentions. But surely, he can’t assume anything detrimental with an inquiry such as this?

She sighs. “Leftover fruit portions with blue milk.”

He nods. “I’ve never cared for blue milk personally.”

She frowns. He’s casual, too casual. She doesn’t know him like that. Their relationship has never been one of camaraderie. He knows that, and it’s infuriating.

“What are you planning?” she fires back, not to be undone by his suspicious demeanor.

If he’s put off by her direct and damning question, he doesn’t show it.

“To find you,” he says simply, and the answer is enough to make her shiver. She tells herself it is with revulsion. She tries to retort, but he cuts her off. “Ah, ah. It’s my turn.” She swears he hasn’t moved a muscle since the Force connected them. “What was your favorite thing to do on Jakku?”

Once again she is stunned. He can ask _anything, _and he chooses to waste his question on…on asking about her origins? The origins of a _nobody?_

Rey blinks several times before responding. “I…used to like watching the stars,” she replies cautiously. “When it was dark enough, I could see ships flying through the night sky. I thought…” and here she breaks eye contact. “I thought maybe one would eventually land.”

She doesn’t need to elaborate.

Rey isn’t sure she wants to play this game anymore. It’s humiliating, and she still isn’t sure what his motives are. She has another question about his location dripping on the tip of her tongue, but she instead goes a different route. She wants to make him feel as small as she does. 

“Why did you kill your father? You never answered me, when I asked before.”

Finally, _finally, _she receives a reaction from him. His mouth curves downward and his shoulders become impossibly stiff. His arms hang by his sides, uselessly, awkwardly. He cannot hide behind a mask now.

“What’s your answer?” she prods. If he wants to play this game, then he must abide by his own rules.

“It was the only option I had left,” he says finally, and Rey notes how his back leans against her wall, as if this short response has taken him a lifetime to admit.

Her face twists into a scowl. “That’s hardly an answer! Not that it should surprise me. You can’t possibly expect me to believe murdering a father who _loved _you-”

“Enough,” he snaps so icily, that she is momentarily taken aback. They glare at each other for so long that Rey’s leg begins to fall asleep. She stands abruptly and turns her back to him, not wanting to look at his face for however long the Force intends to keep them connected.

Eventually, she hears him sigh. “Did you want to become a Jedi?” he asks, his voice in check.

Rey pivots to face him slowly. Whatever question she has been expecting next, it isn’t this.

“It was my duty to-”

“I didn’t ask why,” he reminds her. “I asked if you wanted to.”

His eyes are searching, and she can’t fathom why her feelings on _any _subject should interest him.

“No,” she tells him honestly. “I wanted a family.”

She doesn’t need to tell him this last part, but she does anyway. She tells herself he already know this, he’s seen it in her mind, so she doesn’t know why it feels like she’s just given him something willingly.

They stand five feet apart. Her hands curl into fists at her side.

“Tell me about your parents,” she says, raising her chin.

He frowns. “That isn’t a question.”

“Answer it anyway.”

His eyes glint with something close to mirth, and it’s the first time she’s truly noticed he has brown eyes. Just as quickly the look is gone, and his face resets into something sour, as if he is reliving an unpleasant memory.

Maybe he is.

“They…were some of the most influential people in the galaxy. The weight they carried, after the first Galactic War, was unfeasible to imagine, especially in the eyes of a young boy.” He looks off to the side. “Han didn’t care much for the Force. He didn’t bother to learn of it, practically dismissed it when he discovered I possessed it. Leia, she knew it better, but she was untrained, inexperienced. In order to run a Republic, she forewent her training...amongst other things.” His mouth sets into a bitter grimace.

Rey is almost entirely certain that he has forgotten she is in the room. It’s like he is talking to her empty space, like the sparse furniture is soaking up his every detail.

“She was afraid, and didn’t bother to understand why. When they weren’t fighting they were separated.” He goes quiet here, and Rey takes notice that he never truly mentions himself in the mix of things. He never says _she was afraid of me. _He never says _he didn’t bother to understand me. _

“And Luke?” she prods gently.

This time he meets her eyes. “It’s not your turn,” he reminds her yet again.

Rey would huff if the situation deemed it appropriate. Instead she stands opposite him, waiting expectantly for his question, while still processing the answer he gave her.

He takes another step toward her. They are four feet apart. She notices how his hair shuffles in the light of her room. The small beams glint off his ebony tresses. It’s almost captivating. Almost.

“Who is that traitor to you?” he asks, his lips thinning.

Rey is initially confused by the question. Traitor? What traitor?

But then she is recalled back to snow frosted on her skin, to cracked earth and to a draining sun, and to screams in a silent forest.

“You mean Finn,” she states, wondering why his questioning has led them here.

“FN-2187,” he clarifies.

“His _name _is Finn. And he’s my best friend.”

For some reason, he seems unsatisfied with her answer, but Rey didn’t agree to this game to satisfy _him._

She clears her throat once in preparation for her next question. She clenches and unclenches her fists, telling herself that she isn’t trembling. She doesn’t know why she cares. It’s all in the past after all, and wasn’t he the one to say she should let the past die? Even so…

“Why did you kill Snoke? Tell me really.”

He does not hesitate in his answer. “Because he was going to have me kill you.”

Rey frowns. “I know, but that’s not-”

“Why didn’t you kill me that night?” he blurts out, with as little grace as she has ever seen from him. It is how she knows this question has been eating at him for months, perhaps ever since he woke up in the throne room to find she had disappeared.

At this her shoulders slump. She would have liked to put on a brave face and give him a cold, calculated answer, but she knows he would see right through to her.

And they are beyond lying to one another.

“Because it never even crossed my mind,” she whispers, and she knows it’s not a real answer, but with the way the silence fills the room, it’s exactly what he’s needed to hear.

\--

The way he takes so long to process her most recent answer causes Rey to finally realize his intention in suggesting this game. It’s not a matter of where she is now, but why she left in the first place.

He’s staring at the space on the ground in front of her. His chin trembles as he swallows, and she has to look away.

She doesn’t think she can keep talking. She feels like she might throw up or sink to the ground, and she doesn’t know why. But there’s a part of her that wants to see this game through to the end. He started this for a reason, and she’ll be damned if she backs out now.

Besides, it’s her turn.

“Do you regret killing them?” she almost whispers. “The other students.”

His eyes lock onto hers, and Rey realizes why he has always chosen to wear a mask. His face is a dead give away. Now that she’s chipped away at the surface, he can’t school his features anymore, even if he tried.

“I don’t know.”

Rey nods, mostly to herself. She doesn’t know what to do with this piece of information. It seems every question she asks the less she wants to know, but the more she wants to keep inquiring.

“Would you have spared me?” He watches her carefully. “If it had been Skywalker instead.”

Rey becomes outraged. “Luke would _never _have ordered your execution.” Then there is a beat of uncomfortable silence as she realizes the significance of what she has just said. She looks down. “I don’t know,” she admits, mumbling.

She sits on her bunk again. She’s suddenly exhausted.

“What’s the happiest memory you have of your family?” She doesn’t know why her fingers dig into her mattress.

The way his nostrils flare is almost satisfying, but she’s too curious to feel smug.

He clears his throat. “Why do you want to know that?” he asks coldly.

“I thought we agreed to answer any question.”

He mutters something darkly, and she can’t pick up what it is. He is silent for such a long time that Rey considers snapping at him to speed it up, but finally his shoulders twitch, and he looks like a young Padawan asked to recite a lesson he did not study.

“I was seven. There was this…festival. On Coruscant. All the senators were required to go.”

He’s flexing his fingers and for the first time Rey sees he is not wearing gloves. Why had that not been the first thing she noticed?

“I hated ceremonies, and I knew this one would be no different. I…”

“Threw a fit?” Rey guesses.

He glares at her. “I made my opinion _known._” He clears his throat again. “Han wandered off halfway through, but that was nothing unusual. Leia was conversing with the other senators and as usual I was left to-”

“I asked for a happy memory-” Rey snips, a little harsher than she intends.

But he continues as if she hasn’t spoken.

“Then, when it became dark enough, there were these lightshows. I had seen lightshows before, but none like this. The entire skyline…was mesmerizing. ‘You should have seen the ones on Aldeeran,’ Leia said. ‘I wish I could have taken your father there.’ And then she gripped my shoulder and pointed through the crowd and there he was, with that…that walking carpet, their arms full of Coruscanti delicacies.” He swallows. “That’s all I remember.”

Rey knows he’s lying, and she knows he’s breaking the rules by doing so, but for the life of her she can’t decide why she lets it go.

He scrutinizes her, as if challenging her to judge him, and then seems disappointed when he can’t find a place to put his anger. His bare fingers flex again.

“Do you wish I was there with you?” he questions softly.

Rey is so caught off guard by the question that she chokes on her own spit. Fortunately, she recovers before she _completely _humiliates herself.

“I don’t know why you would even ask that,” she barks, and then for some reason there are tears in her eyes, so she blinks with enough pressure to force them back inside.

So now _she’s_the one lying, and he’s the one letting it go. Rey swats at her eyes with the back of her hand, and they both ignore it.

“Why won’t you come home?” she asks weakly, and he flinches.

“I don’t have a home,” he responds, but his voice breaks.

“Ben-”

“What happened today?”

The tension in the room crackles all around them now. Rey can feel the energy, the disturbance in the Force, hissing at her ear, singeing her skin.

“I…” Her mouth bobs and she can’t seem to get the words out.

“Tell me,” he says, but it’s more of a plea than a demand. “Please.”

_Please. _

Her arms are shaking, and her fingers redouble their grip on the edge of her bed.

“I saw my parents,” she tells him, her voice a whisper that fades into the space of the room. “I saw what’s left of them.”

This time she does not suck back the tears from her eyes.

“You weren’t lying,” she continues, her cheeks wet.

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” he murmurs. 

Rey shuts her eyes and chokes back a sob. Her throat spasms and she swallows heavily. She has one more question to ask, one that’s been festering in her mind because she can already _feel _it. She already _knows. _

But she wants to hear it from him.

“Have you ever loved anyone?”

She stares at him with reddened, puffy eyes, and she feels another lurch in the Force, one so violent and sudden that she almost topples off her bunk and falls to her knees.

His face runs the gamut of emotions. Surprise. Fear. Anger. Confusion. Hope. And then wariness.

He turns to go, and she panics.

“You said you would tell me anything I asked, Ben.” She dares not move from her spot on the bunk. She knows if she gets up now, she might go to him. And she can’t let that happen again.

His back is to her, but he sighs, and then turns his face to the side.

“You would know if I had.”

_That’s not an answer; _she wants to scream. But what’s the point in yelling? He already has an answer to his foolish worries from earlier. He knows why she is upset.

“Well? Are you going to ask your final question or-?”

He crosses the room so quickly, that Rey jumps, her hand automatically leaping to her lightsaber. For a split second, she thinks he is going to strangle her, but his hands turn, and his palms cup either side of her face, and he’s staring at her with such fury and despair that she can’t help but let the world freeze.

Then his brown eyes disappear, sealed behind pale lids, and she can feel his mouth.

It’s a gentle kiss, her first. His lips are soft and red and, they move like petals. She keeps her eyes open.

She wishes she could say she is shocked, but she feels his every intention as it’s happening. The skin of his thumbs brush her cheeks. They catch the salt water that topples.

And then it’s over.

And then Ben is gone.

It takes Rey hours until she realizes he never asked her his last question.

**Author's Note:**

> Not one of my more uplifiting stories, but I kind of like the bittersweet, unknown element of it. It reflects what I’m feeling rn, (see note above.) Anyways, I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless, and who knows, I’ll probably write something more my speed in the near future. Anyways, thanks for reading. :)


End file.
